The World Team Tennis season offers a pleasant little summer break for tennis fans, a low-key Grannies Tour stuck in there between Wimbledon and the American hardcourt season. I call it the Grannies Tour not because gray hairs like John McEnroe can still be found hitting tennis balls for money, but because it's an alternate-reality professional tennis experience, a relaxed, easy-going environment suitable for your grandmother.

Well, not always. You can take a has-been professional tennis player out of serious competition, but you can't always take the serious competition out of the has-been tennis player. An example last week from the Philadelphia Daily News:

Tennis hottie Anna Kournikova threw a fit when a judge warned her for saying "Jesus Christ!" Tuesday night, while she played for the St. Louis Aces against the Philadelphia Freedoms, during World Team Tennis play at the Pavilion at Villanova.

OK, that's pretty tame stuff, even for Granny. It only garnered attention from the Daily News because it was Kournikova -- and because it seemed so out of place in the family-friendly, "Where's Waldo?" atmosphere of World Team Tennis. Kournikova, the one-time WTA sideshow, has been a team-tennis staple in recent years, no doubt the league's attempt to pull in younger fans. And she has been a successful draw. Not only can she still bring in young male droolers who don't really give a fig about tennis, but she can also still strike a fuzzy yellow ball rather well. (She was always rather underappreciated as a player.)

So her outburst at the Pavillion at Villanova was small potatoes, but the local press reaction did kick forth memories of tennis' bad old days. (Or its good old days, depending on your predilections.) Truth be told, Kournikova's tiny fit is pretty much as bad as it gets in 2010. Sure, Andy Roddick still petulantly berates an official now and again, and Nicolas Keifer probably still wants to throw his racket at his opponents, but good behavior has been on the rise throughout the tennis world for years now. Ever since her vicious outburst at the U.S. Open last year, Serena Williams has been as sunny as a rainbow to make up for it. Kim "The Walking Smile" Cljisters is back on tour full time, and even the once-diffident Justin Henin has tossed out a playful giggle or two this year. And with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at the top of the ATP pile for half a decade, good behavior has become the norm on the men's tour.

This means that John McEnroe, the No. 1 player in the world way back during my impressionable tennis years, retains the title of Biggest Tennis Jerk Ever. Let's take a stroll down memory lane...

The "You cannot be serious!" tirade is the most famous McEnroe misbehavior moment, but the one below is more telling. Here's why: The McEnroe myth, propagated by Johnny Mac himself ever since he retired nearly 20 years ago, centers on the idea that he's only obnoxious in the heat of battle. He's a heavy-duty competitor, nothing more. If you knew him off-court, goes the myth, you'd see he was a genial, even lovable, scamp. This scene from the 1982 documentary The French, which I came across on Steve Tignor's blog, puts the lie to all that P.R. mumbo-jumbo. Tignor describes McEnroe here as looking like "one of the Rolling Stones in a Davis Cup uniform." I don't think so. More like Stan Laurel in a Davis Cup uniform. Stan Laurel, playing against type, as Sue Sylvester. McEnroe is astonishingly rude before this match even gets under way. The contempt drips from every syllable and gesture. A rich kid and an alumnus of the exclusive Trinity School, he treats umpires and referees like servants -- except servants in the posh New York neighborhood where Mac grew up surely receive better treatment. McEnroe's parents clearly never instilled in him the manners long expected of New York's swells, so as a matter of course, he mocks and sneers at everyone who isn't his equal, which, in his mind, is everybody.

That was pretty stomach-turning, wasn't it? But, unsurprisingly, McEnroe is only a tough guy when facing someone he knows won't put up any resistance. In the video below, check out how quickly Johnny Mac turns into a twitchy little poodle as Jimmy Connors dresses him down. As Connors advances on him, McEnroe looks quickly down, then left, then right -- anywhere but at Connors, except glancingly, in fear. He only dares push back, and feebly at that, when officials move in to stop the confrontation from getting out of hand.

Now, when Connors thinks you're a pissy little whiner, you must really be a pissy little whiner, for Jimbo was known to vent at umpires, too. Of course, Connors wasn't snotty about it in the entitled, to-the-manor-born way that McEnroe was. Usually, it wasn't personal with Connors. He simply wanted to get the crowd behind him at a key moment. Especially in his later years on tour, he was shameless about pulling at fans' heartstrings. In the video below, for example, Connors disputes an overrule at the 1991 U.S. Open. "I'm out here playing my butt off at 39 years old, and you're doing that?!?" he yells at the umpire, his voice breaking. "You're a bum! You're a bum! Get outta that chair!" And, needless to say, the crowd responds, cheering Connors rapturously.

Do you find all of this dispiriting? There is a way to put a stop to it: